>>13381009You have to stop thinking of Friends as being 100% ride-or-die, 25 hobbies in common, total overlap people. Few later in life will ever match up the same way your graduating class from your home town did. Same thing with meeting women outside of school/work, it's a completely different animal
There might be someone at work you can't STAND, but he has interesting takes on baseball, you might enjoy going to a game together. Another coworker you've heard stories can't handle his liquor, but he's good at lifting weights...so lift weights together, maybe before work so it's a challenge/perseverance thing and zero pressure to socialize afterward. But here's the rub: the more you go out with 2 people, it grows to 4, then to 6. The more people get involved, the more likely you are to become acquainted with Friends of Friends who aren't nearly as one-dimensional as that coworker or classmate. And you can further network from there
In a way, its like hanging out with the ugly girl, hoping to date her hot friend, which can be unfair...but that all depends on how YOU treat it, your level of loyalty, etc. For me, it's been better to hang out with ugly girl and hot friend, take photos, put the photos on social media...suddenly women totally outside that circle are more interested. Your DMs hold more weight, your invitations to events seem less "creepy".
W/R/T forced vs natural, it's word games. Nobody's going to naturally make a phone call, you have to force yourself to dial someone. You have to force yourself to double-text, or to go to someone's social media and like all their shit. The number of people who think you're "too forward" are often dwarfed by the people who choose to interpret your overzealousness as a genuine desire to be their friend. It's all the more impressive if they aren't a millionaire, 10/10 woman, etc, and they're just a normal person like YOU
TL;DR: Build up, whittle down. You can't expect to whittle-down first and work backward.
